Giedo van der Garde admits he hopes "to sign soon" to drive for Caterham in 2013 after two days with the team at the Young Driver Test.

Having missed out on running during FP1 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, van der Garde was entrusted with the CT01 for two of the three days of the Young Driver Test before handing over to Alexander Rossi on Thursday. He completed 129 laps and set a best time half a second quicker than Rossi's, though Caterham remained bottom of the timesheets on all three days.

Looking ahead to 2013, however, van der Garde admitted he was hopeful of getting a race seat with neither Vitaly Petrov nor Heikki Kovalainen confirmed yet at Caterham next season.

"I haven't signed yet but I hope to sign soon," van der Garde said. "I'm happy here, I think the team is a good bunch of people; they're working really hard and there's still new people coming. I'm quite happy here. The team already gave me very good feedback about how I'm doing, how I behave, how my attitude is, how I work with the team, so let's hopefully get forward and sign quickly and get preparation done for next year."

Van der Garde was also pleased with the team's choice of a new team principal in Cyril Abiteboul.

"For me Cyril knows racing, and he's been working a long time with Renault. I like him, so no problem."